These books can save your career

Has your career stalled? Are you living under a cloud of chaos? Do you need a better CV? Maybe it's time to tuck yourself up in bed with a good book that could help reset or fire up your career.

Whatever your problem at work, there is a book to solve it. Every year more and more career-saving books turn up on our shelves. Here are eight of the best career reads for 2019.

Perform Under Pressure
Ceri Evans
This is the best selling careers book published this year by a New Zealand author, according to data from Nielsen BookScan. Psychologist to the All Blacks Dr Ceri Evans' book shows how lessons learned in top sport about performing under pressure can help in the workplace and your personal life. The book is based on Evans' red blue code. The book explains how to recognise that you're in the red and get yourself to blue. When faced with stress, the system empowers you to rename, reframe and reset your thinking to gain emotional control and think and act more effectively in whatever situation you find yourself in. This is the book to read if pressure gets on top of you and holds you back.

Jobs, Robots & Us: Why the Future of Work in New Zealand is in Our Hands
Kinley Salmon
Your job is doomed, if you read the never-ending headlines. Robots will do it in the future. But will they? Ever since the industrial revolution technological change has threatened our jobs, yet unemployment is at record low levels, says author Kinley Salmon. There has always been job displacement and creation. There is a large flaw in the technological unemployment story, says Kinley. This book aims to hit pause on the hype, he says, and look at how New Zealanders can adapt. Could the future actually be better than the past? Salmon argues that the future is not so much about the technological changes and laws of economics, but about the choices we make as a country. For example, the Government could choose to prioritise spending on lifelong learning so that we can adapt as our jobs change, says Kinley. This book is number two on the Nielsen BookScan rating for career-related books.

Ladders 2019 Resume Guide
Employers and recruiters see truly awful CVs every day of the week. Yet there is so much advice out there. This number one bestseller on Amazon is yet another book showing you how to do it right. It has 73 CV templates to get you started and is a super-easy read. An alternative is The 7 Second CV. How to Land the Interview, by James Reed.

Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less
Michael Hyatt
One of the many reasons we can be inefficient at work is a lack of focus due to the physical and mental clutter and chaos in our lives. This is the book for people who think they can't get ahead until they've completed all the tasks hanging over them. It's a practical book with exercises and links to worksheets.

The Proximity Principle
Ken Coleman
This book teaches you how to get in front of the right people instead of wasting energy scouring job boards, sending off CVs and writing cover letters. Find out ways of engineering meetings with people who might employ you or the people who can recommend you.

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2019: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
Richard N. Bolles
It's probably no surprise that a search for the best-selling careers books internationally comes up with the 2019 edition of this book. Job hunting is different now from 10 or 20 years ago, and the book has changed accordingly. An alternative is The Ultimate Job Hunting Book : Write a Killer CV, Discover Hidden Jobs, Succeed at Interview, by multiple authors.

Girl, Stop Apologizing
Rachel Hollis
The genre of women in the workplace is a big one for careers books. Every woman who ever had imposter syndrome in the workplace or just isn't getting ahead ought to read books such as this one. In Girl, Stop Apologizing you will learn how to stop being defined as wife, mother, daughter, employee and so on. You'll be shown how to sidestep the excuses that get in the way of accomplishing goals and you'll stop asking for permission and other female-centric behaviours.